Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Fiscal Conservatives Hate Our Freedoms

The Davos quote of the day comes from Cheng Siwei, vice chairman of the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress, and thus a communist (well, in a Chinese kind of way).

In one of the many discussions about the state of the global economy, several Americans called on Chinese consumers to spend more, to make up for the downturn in the United States. After all, China's savings rate stands at 50%, the US savings rate is in single digits.

Persuading the Chinese to flock to the shops would be tricky, said Mr Cheng: "The Chinese save today’s spending for tomorrow, and the American’s spend tomorrow’s saving today."

Touché. The whole room collapsed in laughter and applause.

Damn those perfidious commies. Don't they know that those who are fiscally conservative and actually save money hate our freedoms?